Unlocking Adeline (Skeleton Key) (4 page)

“Addie Bear, I need ye to promise me ye will come straight home after work.”

“But, Dad, why? I want to hang out with some friends after work! What’s the big deal?”

“Addie, please, I’m trying to keep ye safe. Can’t ye just understand that?”

“Dad, from who, the boogie man? I’m not five anymore. I’m twenty-one now. I need to stay out later than sun down. I need to be a normal adult.”

“Just please, Addie, I worry. I’m afraid.”

“For what, Dad? You’ve been acting so strange lately? Ever since Mom got better, you haven’t been yourself. Is there something wrong? Is Mom relapsing?” My dad approaches me, placing his warm hands on each side of my face.

“No, baby girl, nothing is wrong with Mom. But I just need ye to come home, okay?” His eyes flare with worry. Something isn’t right, but he is trying to hide it. He offers me that look that he always gets when he gets deep into his stories. His fables. As if he almost believes them to be real.

“Dad, I love you. Fine, I’ll come home, Okay?” Instant relief spreads across his face.

“Thank ye, Addie. Thank ye.”

I sigh, wishing he didn’t have such a guilty hold over me. The way he always begs me to come home. Begs me to stay away from boys. Prays at night that I will never leave our home. He was so wrapped up in me just disappearing one day; I had to wonder what he was hiding.

I love my dad. But he doesn’t see what his rules are doing to me. Stripping me of a normal life. With normal things and normal people. I yearn to be normal. To have friends. Maybe a boyfriend. To be kissed. To have sex! Just to be a grown up. Anything but the child my dad still sees me as.

“How about I make yer favorite meal for dinner, aye?” He smiles, his faded accent coming through, as he pats my shoulders.

“Sounds good, Dad.” I turn and head toward the door.

“Oh, and Addie?”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Happy twenty-first birthday, baby girl.”

I offer my dad a small smile. Yeah. Happy twenty-first to me. I turn and head out to work.

“Whoa. Miss, are you okay?” He catches me by my bruised and dirtied arm, and I wince. He realizes it and lets me go.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry. I just have to… to…” I realize that telling him I need to call for help because I’m being chased by a mythical character from my dad’s bedtime stories sounds a bit crazy, so I lie, “—get a book for my grandmother. She is on her death bed…. Um, last rights and all. So I need a book.” I give him my best puppy dog face, because dirty or not, no one can turn down a request of a dying grandmother.

“Well… Alright. I guess I can open up the register. Please be quick though. I need to get home.” I nod quickly and dash into an aisle. I don’t even look which aisle, I just need to get my bearing’s together and figure out my next plan, which hopefully involves making sense of how
he
is real.

“Daddy, can you tell me the story again about the prince with the crescent moon?” I ask, as Daddy puts me to bed. Jenny Myers in my Kindergarten class told me she was a princess and I wasn’t. That I wasn’t pretty enough. She tried pulling my hair and made me cry again. I always feel better when Daddy tells me this story. I always picture the prince with the crescent mark coming for me at night, like a knight coming to rescue his princess. Then I picture rubbing it in Jenny Myers’ face. I snuggle into my bed, dreaming that maybe tonight will be the night.

“Legends say that when the princess comes of age, her prince will come and bring her home to his castle. She will be courted and if she chooses this prince, she will be married and become Queen.”

I squeeze my blanket tighter, just thinking about how wonderful it would be to be a princess.

“And how will she know it’s him? What if she mistakes him for someone else?” I question.

Daddy’s eyes always look so sad, telling this part of the story. “He will bear the crescent moon in his vision. He will come for her and she will know.”

“Are you almost done back there, Miss?” The clerk yells back, and I jolt.

Shit. I shake off the strange memory. “Um, yes! I think I may have found something,” I yell back, looking around and realizing I’m in the fairy tale section.
Go figure.
I grab for any random book, trying to search out the back hallway way when I hear it: the pounding on the door. I turn quickly and watch in fear as the clerk makes his way to the door.
Oh God, please don’t let him in.
I freeze in place, watching him point to the sign through the glass door, and I hear him recite, “We’re closed.”

The slowest two minutes pass, until I see the clerk nod and turn around. I exhale the deepest breath I was holding, feeling a huge sense of relief. I turn, making my way to the back, when the sound of shattering glass fills the store.

I turn and watch the madness. He’s inside.
No!
The clerk attempts to fend himself off from the man, but it’s no use. Hulk takes the butt of his knife and bashes it into his head. The clerk’s body falls to the ground, limp and unmoving. I gasp as we suddenly make eye contact, and it’s then he begins to storm my way.
Yep, I’m outta here.
As I turn to take off down the aisle, I grab a handful of books off the shelf and toss them, one after another at him. He swats each one away as if it’s a gnat fluttering in his path.

“Stay away from me!” I yell, picking up another book and throwing it.

“That I cannot do. Ye can come with me willing, or I can force ye.”

This guy is insane if he thinks I am just going to go with him! “You’re crazy! What are you going to do, just kidnap me?” Another book. Another swat.

“It is not kidnapping if ye belong to me.” I shake my head, not allowing his words to combine with my dad’s tales. Speaking of my dad, I’m going to
kill
him.

I need to think. I throw another book, trying to buy some time. I’m almost to the end of the aisle. I just need to get to the back door. If I can just throw a book, catch him off guard, and ru— “Ahh!” I squeal as he lunges for me.

Any chance of escape is useless because he has an unnatural quickness to him that I don’t stand a chance against. He takes me to the ground, covering my head before we hit the floor. I go to scream my bloody head off, but he’s faster, placing his hand over my mouth.

“Ye will stop yelling or I may think of taking out yer tongue. I am sure my brother would be just fine with a mute wife.”

Wait, what? Brother?

“Who are you?” My voice quivers.

“Ye know who I am.”

“Wren, you’re the son of Wren,” I crazily admit.

“Very good, sweet girl. It seems yer father has done well, keeping his precious offspring educated.”

“But how are you here? You’re not supposed to be real. I don’t understand.”

“I think ye know why.” He grabs for my wrist, twisting it until my palm is facing upward. His thumb brushes against the birthmark that’s been on my wrist since day one. It heats immediately. “I would hate to bore ye with the details when ye already know,” he says.

“That what, you’re a psychopath, who just almost killed two people and are now trying to kidnap me?”

“Ye mean those hooligans who were about to rape and possibly kill ye? Should I have left ye there? Would that have been a better outcome? And him?” He nudges his head toward the poor store clerk. “He will be fine. Just a bump.”

“Please, just let me go. I’m pretty sure you’ve got the wrong person. I’m just a normal girl. No one special, I swear. We can forget this happened. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

He rubs this thumb once again over my birthmark, the heat almost scorching. “Do ye feel that? Do ye feel how the mark ye bear ignites when I touch it? That means ye are most definitely the right girl. And trust me, ye are
very
special.”

The stories that I begged for my dad to retell, time after time, are coming to haunt me; the moment when the Prince of Wren comes to claim his princess. But in my dreams it is nothing like this. It is beautiful. He is kind and wistful. And I am willing. Right now I’m scared, and regretful that I ever wanted those dreams to come true, because this reality is anything but magical.

“I won’t go with you. I owe you nothing,” I bark in his face.

“It’s a shame yer father has already made that decision for ye.”

Before I have a chance to argue back, he is sprinkling something sweet smelling over my nose, and everything goes black.

W
hen I begin to come to, I hear the desperate pleas of my father.

“Dad?” I groan, realizing I’m in my house, on the floor. I search for my dad and spot him sitting on the couch with his face tucked into his hands.

“I’ve searched high and low for ye, Richard McAllister of Wren. I have to say, it took great courage to return home after all these years.”

His words confuse me.
Home?
I whip my head toward my dad. If this is all true, that means home is Wren? “Wren is your
home
? Dad, what’s going on?” I try and stand up, but I am dizzy on my feet. Hulk catches me, holding me steady.

“Oh, Addie Bear, I’m so sorry,” he begins to cry into his hands now.